EmRata talks feminism, Piers Morgan & THAT naked selfie

Bookworm, film fan, telly addict. Special skill: I can recite the whole of Spaceballs.

Saturday 5 August 2017

"To start saying that certain people need to have a licence to be feminist is insane,” says Emily Ratajkowski. “Emma Watson said feminism isn’t some kind of tool to beat other women with, it’s supposed to be a freedom of choice. And I believe in sexuality. I think it’s a wonderful thing and, if anything, I want women to understand their own sexuality outside of a patriarchal male gaze. We’re the core of sexual beings, and I think that’s something that should be celebrated rather than attacked.”

David Slijper

Whatever you do, don’t accuse Emily of being unfeminist. And definitely don’t do it on social media. People have foolishly tried (hi, Piers Morgan), and they have been taken down, because even if you don’t agree with her particular brand of feminism (which she’s fine with, by the way), she has the smarts and the courage of her convictions to debate it with you.

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“From the beginning, when I didn’t have as much popularity, I made the decision to be as honest as I could about who I am and what I believe, and I have never apologised for that,” she says, referring to what she posts to her 14.3 million – and rising constantly – followers. “I could have been like, ‘I’ll never post a sexy selfie again because I want people to take me seriously as an actress,’ or I could have said, ‘I’ll never talk on political issues because I want people to see me as this sex symbol,’ or whatever.”

David Slijper

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Not her style. But let’s get it out of the way. Yes, the 26-year-old Insta-famous model and actress is a total bombshell, and yes, her feed is chocka with sexy selfies, but (as she must be getting tired of explaining now) that doesn’t mean her other interests, which include art and politics, aren’t allowed to co-exist in one female.“Every woman I know is battling perception,” she says.

“We are constantly feeling the fact that our culture tries to box women into specific categories. Of course, all of us have to deal with stereotypes, men included, but I think women have it so much worse.” And when people do try to box her in, she will bite back – whether it’s to shut down the aforementioned Mr Morgan, to defend Melania Trump against slut-shaming on Twitter, or to support fellow actress Emma Watson’s choice to pose in whatever the hell she likes for a magazine.

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“I’ve always been persistent when something comes up – even if it’s really controversial,” she says. “I feel that if you have a lot of followers, it’s a way of casting your vote and saying this is what you believe. I think we should all be engaged in politics and hopefully have people think differently or become aware of an issue that they weren’t before. Black Lives Matter is something that I talk about a lot, and a lot of people see it on my feed and they don’t like it, but to me it’s important to bring what I can to that movement by sharing that topic with my followers as a way of contributing.”

David Slijper

Last year, Emily got an overwhelming response when she wrote an essay titled Baby Woman for Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter, about how it feels to be a young teenager with a rapidly developing body, and to be defined by others as “sexy” when you’re still working out who you are. “I was in New York when it came out and I had girls come up to me, very emotional, saying, ‘You were talking about this thing that I’ve experienced where I felt somewhere between feeling guilty and vulgar,’” she says. “I think they just appreciated someone talking about it. It’s a difficult time and because some of your friends may not have got there, you feel really lonely.”

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The daughter of an English literature professor and an abstract painter, Emily’s upbringing was a creative one. Born in the UK in 1991, she spent her early years between London and the US, and credits Britain with introducing her to acting. “I think London was the first time I ever fell in love with theatre,” she says, “because my mum was teaching there and she got inexpensive tickets. Every Friday, instead of going to the movies, my parents would take me to Les Misérables or Cats, or one of the other [musicals or] plays in the early ’90s that were very popular.”

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They moved back to California when she was five (and she’s enough of a Cali-girl that she’s “always cold” and “loves the beach more than anything”) but she’s still proud of her British-isms – and that includes a solid appreciation of an airport Wetherspoons. "I love a good jar or a pint for sure,” she says. “And I love an English breakfast. Even when I pass through Heathrow for, like, an hour, I order a full English breakfast, the black pudding and everything. My British friends say, ‘I don’t even eat that,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, I do.’ I love it.”

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Emily studied art at UCLA [dropping out after a year to concentrate on modelling] and has been heavily inspired by art and design. She still paints and draws, and collects art with her musician boyfriend, Jeff Magid. Her collection is made up of her dad’s paintings, friends’ paintings and photographs. “It’s really important to me,” she says. “I grew up surrounded by art, so now it doesn’t feel like a home unless there’s a lot of paintings on the walls and stuff.”

She has also turned her artist’s eye to co-designing The Kooples’ first bag collection. It consists of 50 pieces, including the ‘Emily’ bag, which she’s hoping will become a modern classic. “I just really didn’t want it to get overly stylised,” she says. “I wanted it to be a bag that you could have in 20 years and it wouldn’t feel like, ‘Oh, this is so 2017,’ you know? I think that while there’s something casual about it, it also adds colour to whatever you wear.”

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She says she spent “a ton of time” researching the brand after meeting with the label in Paris during Fashion Week, but also acknowledges that well-thought-out collaborations, along with her modelling gigs, allow her to be choosy when it comes to film roles. After shooting to fame in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines video, she played the hot student Ben Affleck’s character was having an affair with in Gone Girl, and the ‘hot girlfriend of…’ in We Are Your Friends. Yeah, being offered the ‘hot girl’ role became a regular thing. We talk a little bit about Matthew McConaughey’s ‘McConaissance’, whereby he turned down the sort of lucrative rom-com hero roles that made him famous in order to reinvent himself as a more versatile actor.

“That’s basically my strategy,” Emily says, “and part of the reason I’m so grateful I have modelling and so many other things that I’m doing – because if I didn’t have other ways of making money, I’d be like, ‘OK, I guess I’m doing the bathing-suit-girl role.’ You really have to prove yourself in this industry and I’m very much up for the challenge. It takes a really long time to not only prove yourself, but also prove that you’re more dynamic than just this one part of you that they see.”

Her strategy and grit are paying off. The day after our interview Emily is due to fly to Italy to film psychological thriller Welcome Home – her first lead role – alongside Aaron Paul. “I’m always looking for scripts that pass the Bechdel test and this is definitely one where, for the first time, you see my character in their own world, and their story through their perspective – not just through a male perspective, and that’s exciting for me.” She wishes she could more rigorously apply the Bechdel test (whereby the project involves two or more women who talk to each other about something other than a man) when choosing roles, but there still just aren’t enough, she says. Instead, she just tries to identify strong female roles.

Emily tells me her best friend – a pre-school teacher in San Diego, where she went to high school – would describe her as a dork. We all know that “I’m really just a goofball” is the classic hot-girl refrain, but there’s no doubt Emily’s a girls’ girl. Her female friends feature in the majority of her anecdotes, from her perfect night out (“a long dinner with girlfriends, red wine and karaoke”) to a recent night out (“I was having drinks with my girlfriends”), and she credits Instagram with facilitating her extended female network in real life. “It used to be so scary to go to the Met Ball and things like that,” she says. “I’d think, ‘Oh, I’m not going to know anyone there,’ and now it’s so nice to feel like it’s a community. Like Amy Schumer, I like everything she posts, she likes everything I post, and at the Met we just gave each other a big hug; a ‘Yes, we’re here for each other.’ It’s nice to have that relationship with people.”

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But that’s not to say she’s never starstruck. “I am completely obsessed with Nicki Minaj,” she says. “I met her in Paris and turned into such a fangirl. Instead of being cool and saying, ‘Oh, hi, we’re at the same party’ kind of thing, I was immediately like, ‘I love you, you’re so cool, and the way you rap is so amazing.’ She was so nice and, like, followed me back on Instagram, so if I’m ever wondering, ‘Ah, should I have posted that?’ and then she likes it, I think, ‘OK, I’m never deleting it, it’ll be there forever.’ And I didn’t technically meet him, but Mick Jagger was at this Oscar party that I was at and he was dancing next to me on the dancefloor. I was thinking, ‘This is absolutely ridiculous.’”

Emily’s Insta-perfect life does seem kind of ridiculous, but she’s the first to admit that, for all the platform’s pros (“you can build your own image”), it’s important not to be sucked into mistaking the carefully curated illusion for real life. “It’s not real, it’s a version of reality, and as a visual person who loves art, photographs, fashion, I’m kind of interested in the fantasy,” she says. “But it’s important to realise that some people have a hard time distinguishing what’s fantasy and what’s reality. We owe it to our followers to show the glam, but then also the real you.”

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And the real Emily isn’t always at the Met Ball or the Cannes Film Festival in a gown. Sometimes she’s chilling out in double denim like she is today. And sometimes she’s at home, binge-watching Netflix like the rest of us. She’s been reading Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and watching Big Little Lies. “I could easily watch 13 hours of TV, no problem,” she laughs. “I’m actually planning my perfect night in for tonight because it’s my last night at home for two months. I’m going to get Thai food delivered and I’m going to be lying in my bed watching a really cheesy movie.”

So is she the glamazon red-carpet-rocking friend of Bella and Hailey or the takeaway-ordering, binge-watching homebody? Switched-on political campaigner or naked-selfie taker? All of the above. Don’t box her in.